A program that I recommend everyone try

[Ryan Rudolph]

For all of you you haven't tried it, I recommend you check out the program "Stumble Upon", which is an extension of the firefox internet browser. What you do is choose all your common interests, like the Sciences, philosophy, geography, politics or what have you, and when you press the stumble icon, the program generates one of the more popular and most viewed pages on the net under one of your subjects of interests.

Moreover, the program is quite effective in finding interactive science videos for things like astronomy, biology, physics and so on. And it is also quite effective at locating some of the best satires for American politics, religion and so on.

And its a qood way to browse the internet if you don't really know what you're looking for because the program will generate interesting results that you never would have found on your own accord. And you can save results in a favorites section just by voting that you liked it, which makes the website score more popular, and if you rate it as unpopular, then the page would be generated less often by the program if large numbers of users feel it is unpopular.

The result is that most of the pages end up being short interactive videos, or articles, that have interesting content, but you dont have to spend hours reading because the most popular sites are usually designed to be more concise, interactive, and to the point.

Here is an example of the types of videos, lectures that you can find - http://www.okananter.com/wordpress/?p=21

[Dan Rowden]

Hmm, not bad. My second hit for "philosophy" was the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche. http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/nietzsche/

I'm not usually all that fussed on browser toolbar addons but this might be useful.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Dan wrote:

I'm not usually all that fussed on browser toolbar addons but this might be useful.

I usually don't go for addons either, but this one seems to generate numerous interesting results. Many are crap, but you just keep clicking through until something of value pops up.

I found an interesting documentary today, which examined the mind of a math savant and the memory genius that inspired the film rainman. This two are not sage material, but learning about how their minds work is definitely interesting. The math savant is able to see numbers as forms and shapes, and perform complicated calculations in his head without doing any calculations at all, he just sort of has visions of shapes and forms that represent numbers, and the answer comes as a sort of vision. He was actually able to read Pye to 22 500 places in an competition, and it took him five hours... very interesting. As a child he was autistic, and he had frequent seizures that psychologists believe rewired his brain in such a way to let him to be able to perceive numbers as forms and shapes.

Here is the link if anyone is interested: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 5903075662

[Cory Duchesne]

I'm liking the stumble upon.

My first stumble gave me this:

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm

A simple presentation, but I like it when reality is presented in a really visual-spatial sort of way.

As I followed the scale of the planets getting bigger and bigger, I noticed with a bit of fascination that I suddenly got short of breath for just a second. The sheer immensity that I fathomed literally took my breath away. And as I realized this, that Berlin song from the Top Gun soundtrack flickered through my my mind and in a knee jerk fashion I cringed and scorned myself:

"you bitch!"

But then I reassured myself:

"It's just a bit of immensity - no need to gasp like a fish out of water."

But frankly, I've never really understood the cliche 'took my breath away' until now. I guess it's one of those experiences you just stumble upon.

(yellow face icon expressing that the pun succumbed to had left one feeling the need to drink alcohol, seek shoddy company, and gloat over the deficiencies of other people...)

As a child he was autistic, and he had frequent seizures that psychologists believe rewired his brain in such a way to let him to be able to perceive numbers as forms and shapes.

Here is the link if anyone is interested: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 5903075662

Yeah, I remember seeing that before. At the time it simply strengthened my belief in cosmic consciousness. How can that be explained without postulating a mystical 'otherness'?

But now I just shrug (with repressed anger) and mutter defeatedly:

maybe it can be....

[Cory Duchesne]

I'm not joking about having my breath shortened by contemplating those models.

I think having your breath taken away is just your brain suddenly demanding more oxygen, due to the unusual nature of its activity.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Cory wrote:

Yeah, I remember seeing that before.

Please don’t tell me that I watched this with you before because I thought it was the first time I seen it…lol.

I could probably use a bit of that rainman’s memory genius skills myself.

Cory wrote:

At the time it simply strengthened my belief in cosmic consciousness. How can that be explained without postulating a mystical 'otherness'?

But now I just shrug (with repressed anger) and mutter defeatedly:

maybe it can be....

This is merely speculation, but this film may illustrate what is possible in terms of the human brain tapping into extraordinary abilities, just imagine a sage-like consciousness with the memory of the rainman guy, and the math/language abilities of the math savant. So perhaps genetic engineers can eventually learn all the different neurological maps of these savants, and use this knowledge to engineer greater and greater intelligence.

Here are three other interactive science videos that I thought were quite good -

1. The Anatomy of a Black Hole - http://www.thinktechnologies.com/portfo ... khole.html
2. Cell Biology Animations - http://www.johnkyrk.com/
3. What Evolution left behind on Humans - http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/07 ... -on-humans

[Cory Duchesne]

Cory wrote:

Yeah, I remember seeing that before.

Please don’t tell me that I watched this with you before because I thought it was the first time I seen it…lol.

lol

No, no - about a month ago I started watching docs from this site:

best online documentaries

I've been meaning to post that site on this forum. But it kept slipping my mind.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Since we're on the topic another useful tool from Google that can give great results:

http://books.google.com/ - full text search and easy browsing of scanned pages of surprisingly many books.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Cory wrote

best online documentaries

Sweet….you’ve just earned yourself a cookie for this find Dufrene.lol…

Diebert wrote:

http://books.google.com/ - full text search and easy browsing of scanned pages of surprisingly many books.

I didn’t know this was in existence, but I’m not surprised. I’m impressed with google’s latest ambitions to provide the public with all these free services that allows users to find more specialized forms of information with ease.

Another significant venture is google’s latest interest in space. They have just introduced Google Sky as an extension of Google earth, its fairly informative for anyone curious about astronomy. And I also read that they have two contracts with NASA to eventually provide the public with a Google Moon program and Google Mars.

If I was a google stockholder, I’ve be quite pleased with the creativity and innovation in the company.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

There's already some part online to try:

http://moon.google.com - only a small area though from the moonlandings)

http://mars.google.com - quite some material already there

But there are already some other websites that provide zooming in on Moon and Mars surface. Perhaps not as smooth and fast working as Google's infrastructure can, but they're around.

If combined with a Windows (or also now Java) program, it's hard to beat the (free) NASA program Worldwind for zooming into and around the Earth, even with up-to-date pics.

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

If you really want to travel in style.... It should include Moon maps too, though haven't tried it since a while.

[imd12c4funn]

Interestingly enough, I was browsing for a different Nvedea graphic card driver when somehow, and without Firefox, I stumbled upon this site.
How I got here in lieu of a graphic driver will forever be a mystery to me.

I give this site a stumbling 10.

[Katy]

It's the only addon I have, and I use it frequently... it's where most of the news things I post at FP come from. I once stumbledupon this place, as well. :)

[Dan Rowden]

Stumbling the "spirituality" category is a scary yet interesting thing to do. One thing I didn't immediately realise, too, is that I can promote Genius Realms stuff using it. The only problem I've encountered - and it could just be the way I'm set up - is that it keeps telling me I've seen all the philosophy pages and I get stuck in a loop of my own profile. I'm not sure why it doesn't just keep offering random hits of the pages in the system.

[Katy]

Stumbling the "spirituality" category is a scary yet interesting thing to do. One thing I didn't immediately realise, too, is that I can promote Genius Realms stuff using it. The only problem I've encountered - and it could just be the way I'm set up - is that it keeps telling me I've seen all the philosophy pages and I get stuck in a loop of my own profile. I'm not sure why it doesn't just keep offering random hits of the pages in the system.

I have never had that problem and I've been using it for years.
Although that could be because I have news and politics as one of my categories and thus there are always new pages. I think I hit philosophy relatively rarely compared to news, atheism, and science, actually.